About whether AI-built projects like fnCAD show AI can replace open-source software.
Has this happened?
Yes 16 (15%)Not sure 37 (36%)No 51 (49%)
Votes cast 1–2 October 2026: 100,590 votes from 9,694 people.
Hacker News has set AI a lot of challenges over the years. Which ones has it met?
About whether AI-built projects like fnCAD show AI can replace open-source software.
Votes cast 1–2 October 2026: 100,590 votes from 9,694 people.
This is a good example of what I mean! fnCAD appears to be a significantly buggier and highly incomplete version of OpenSCAD, where AI essentially grabbed the low-hanging fruit - albeit an impressively large amount of fruit - and left you with the hard parts. I fail to see how this solved any problems. Maybe it was an experiment, which is fine. But it's not even close to a viable CAD product, even by OpenSCAD's scruffy FOSS standards, and there's no feasible way to get it there without a ton of human work.
Not trying to denigrate the work here, as such. But this certainly didn't convince me that using AI to replace OpenSCAD (or any other major open-source project) is a good idea. The LLMs still aren't even close to being able to pull it off.